Moderating Effect of Employee Engagement on the Relationship between Personality Traits and Team Performance: A Study of Employees in Private Colleges in Oman

Abstract

This study examines the impact of the five-factor model of personality on team performance of teaching and administration staff in private colleges in Oman. The five-factor model consists of extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness to experience and neuroticism. A field study had been conducted using a sample size of 130 employees in private colleges in Oman. Data was collected through a 36-item questionnaire through convenience sampling. As anticipated, the results are consistent with many previous searches presenting the relationship between agreeableness, conscientiousness, extroversion, and openness to experience on team performance is positive and significant while neuroticism has a negative relationship with team performance. Employee engagement does moderate the relationship between extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and team performance. Employee engagement has a minor moderating effect on the relationship between openness to experience and team performance. The study has enlightened the reality of the relationship between personality traits and team performance with a clear understanding of the academic administration of colleges in Oman. Therefore, organizations should consider the personality traits of employees to improve the overall performance of teams. The sampling from a similar type of organization and exclusion of some of the contextual variables are limitations of this study that hinder generalization to other industries and contexts. This research recommends to include other variables such as gender difference and organizational culture through a cluster of organizations with a large sample that may add more to the validity of results for generalization.